Space, Time, and Sociomaterial Relationships: Moral Aspects of the Arrival of Electricity in Rural Zanzibar

Only a few years after Thomas Edison made the first public demonstration of the incandescent light in 1879 in Menlo Park, New Jersey (Nye 1990:3), electricity appeared in Zanzibar Town. One of the Sultan’s palaces was lit in 1886. Since then, the ruling classes, from the Sultanate period to various post-independence governments have used electric light to create and express their distinct versions of modernity and their corresponding images of what Zanzibar is and should be (Winther 2011).